“… A tai chi master would tell you that you’re doing nothing wrong but you just don’t have it yet. It takes years and years to fully discover tai chi. You cannot just learn life instantly. Life is to be lived. You might think “If I find a good teacher, if I read a good book, I will eventually become very wise, and I will have conquered all the difficulties in life.” If you do that, then what’s next? Boredom. ...  read more

The Chinese Wushu Duanwei System is a hierarchical system which the Chinese Wushu Association formulated to evaluate the professional level of wushu practitioners. Based on this system, a series of Textbooks was compiled to ensure a unified standard of education and evaluation. In order to promote the popularization of Wushu and develop different schools, every effort was made to establish an agreed set of standards in the hope of guiding wushu practitioners to master wushu and its empty hand and ...  read more

An elderly Chinese woman had two large water pots hung on either end of a pole, which she carried across her neck. One of the pots had a crack in it and at the end of the long walks from the river to the house, the cracked pot always arrived only half full.   Every day the woman continued to bring home only one and a half pots of water. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments. ...  read more

A review of scientific literature suggests that there is strong evidence of beneficial health effects of tai chi and qi gong, including for bone health, cardiopulmonary fitness, balance, and quality of life. Researchers from the Institute of Integral Qigong and Tai Chi (Santa Barbara, California), Arizona State University, and the University of North Carolina analyzed 77 articles reporting the results of 66 randomized controlled trials of tai chi and qi gong. The studies involved a total of 6,410 participants. Of ...  read more

We know that physical activity and exercise are supposed to improve psychological health. However, the question has been what if any, effect Tai Chi has on stress, anxiety, depression and mood disturbance in eastern and western populations. Eight English and 3 Chinese databases were used to collate forty studies totalling 3817 subjects that met the criteria of having at least 1 reportable psychological health outcome. Approximately 29 psychological measurements were assessed revealing that Tai Chi significantly increased psychological well-being including ...  read more

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – In the largest study to date of the Arthritis Foundation's Tai Chi program, participants showed improvement in pain, fatigue, stiffness and sense of well-being. Their ability to reach while maintaining balance also improved, said Leigh Callahan, PhD, the study's lead author, associate professor in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine and a member of UNC's Thurston Arthritis Research Center. "Our study shows that there are significant benefits of the Tai Chi ...  read more

Osteoarthritis (OA) refers to a clinical syndrome of joint pain accompanied by varying degrees of functional disability and impaired quality of life. The prevalence increases with age, and OA is one of the leading causes of pain and disability for the adult population worldwide (NICE 2008). Tai Chi is a form of exercise that focuses on controlled movements combined with diaphragmatic breathing and relaxation while maintaining good posture (Hall et al 2009). This randomised controlled trial included modified Yang-style Tai ...  read more

People with Parkinson's disease usually have substantially impaired balance, leading to diminished functional ability and an increased risk of falling. Although exercise is routinely encouraged by health care providers, few programs have been proven effective. A randomized, controlled trial was conducted by the Oregon Research Institute, with funding from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, to determine whether a tailored Tai Chi program could improve postural control in sufferers of idiopathic Parkinson's disease. All trial participants undertook 60-minute ...  read more

Scientists from the University of South Florida and Fudan University in Shanghai found increases in brain volume and improvements on tests of memory and thinking in Chinese seniors who practiced Tai Chi three times a week, reports an article published June 19 in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease. The findings were based on an 8-month randomized control trial comparing those who practiced Tai Chi to a group who did not. The trial also showed increases in brain volume and cognitive ...  read more

A study was carried out in 2007 to evaluate the effects of Tai Chi on resting and vaccine-stimulated levels of cell-mediated immunity (CMI) to varicella zoster virus (VZV), and on health functioning in older adults. The trial was conducted over 25 weeks, and at week 16 participants were vaccinated with VARIVAX, the live attenuated Oka/Merck VZV vaccine licensed to prevent varicella. The Tai Chi group showed higher levels of VZV-CMI than the health education control group, with a significant rate ...  read more